Message from the Chairperson
As we celebrated thirty years of the SEWA Cooperative Federation with Elaben on 8th July 2022, little did we expect that it would be the last such special event with our beloved founder and leader of the SEWA movement. As we mourned her passing in November 2022, we strengthened our resolve to take her legacy forward. She innovated organising strategies and learned from praxis that union and cooperative must jointly act to end the many injustices, exploitation and poverty that informal women workers and their families face every day. Her vision for a just world with decent work for all was based on the building block of organising forging unity and building solidarity among all workers, regardless of caste, language, religion, ethnicity and geography. Workers’ unity and solidarity, with recognition of women’s work and contribution to the country’s economy and society were her life’s work and passion. She urged us to struggle and also think of alternative, workable ways of ensuring livelihoods. “No hands should be idle”, she advised us. She dreamed of a better world for all Indians and indeed the working poor everywhere, all informal workers.
From her own experience of cooperatives in India and overseas, she realised that cooperatives were the way forward, as she reminded us repeatedly struggle and development through unions and cooperatives for social change and a fair world with “roti, kapda, makaan” (food, clothes, shelter) and basic services for all. This, she believed, could be achieved by organising women at the household level for full employment work and income security, food security and social security (at least health care, child care, insurance, pension and housing with basic amenities) and self-reliance. The latter includes financial sustainability and also decision-making and control in the hands of women.
